Friday, 10 April 2015

The Whitechapel Gallery

77-82
Whitechapel High Road,

London E1 7 QX

Wednesday April 9 2015

Today’s museum outing was prefaced by another (yes, we feel
entitled to be blasé having already been in the Evening Standard and Guardian
and on BBC and ITV) meeting with the press – this time Alexi Duggins, Editor at Large (that means he gets
to leave the office – a lot) from Time
Out who have previously given us a boost
and reference though not a full article. I think the element he found
most intriguing was that we stuck at one thing whereas I suppose his
professional life is defined by variety and novelty.

Very helpfully he and his photographer had alerted the
gallery that they were coming and this allowed us to take a few photos, and be
escorted by Alex, the Gallery’s press and PR officer.

The gallery has a
long and venerable history and we liked the fact that it was founded in the
spirit of Victorian philanthropy – the Barnetts strike again! – and the wish to
bring art to the East End, and also allow locals to exhibit. (Though to prove that philanthropy is not
always modest, we have been interested to learn that it lost a chance for a
substantial donation from John Passmore Edwards when, unlike the Library next
door, it declined to call itself the Passmore Edwards Gallery.) The South East London member of the
party is pleased to note that architect for the Gallery, Charles Harrison
Townsend, is also the man who designed the Horniman Museum.

From 1901the Whitechapel Gallery has stood at the heart of
a changing community showcasing the work of a range of contemporary artists for
free and welcoming in the locals – most galleries that do not house permanent
collections are to be found ‘up west’ and are essentially commercial. There was a great range of limited editions prints should you have the wall space. The original purpose designed building
was revamped in the Eighties and in 2009 almost doubled its exhibition space by
incorporating the Passmore Edwards Library from next door – the fusion of the
two buildings works extremely well and we loved the space and light within
before we had even entered any of the display galleries. It is no accident that
two previous directors, Charles Aitken and then Sir Nicholas Serota, went on to
helm the Tate Gallery(ies). Their reputation has been in hosting more
challenging exhibitions, but also those that draw on the local community.

The downstairs room had just closed its exhibition about the
‘black square’ looking at abstract art which has been around longer than you
might think. We were upstairs enjoying
the energy of Peter Liversidge’s ‘Notes on Protesting’ where he had worked with
a local Tower Hamlets School (Marion Richardson, she of the handwriting) to get
primary age children to think about what they disliked and wanted to change.
Anything that politicizes and activises young people must be good and we agreed
with most of their choices: banning dog poo (or at least clearing it properly) and
helping poor people ranked high and were straightforward and laudable. A plea
to do away with Homework is not new and as Jo said years of research has not
really proved whether making younger children (as young as 4+) ‘do homework’ actually
improves their learning or achievements overall. I suppose for secondary age
pupils the time might be too short to cover the curriculum without doing some
of it out of school?? Anyway I digress – There must be an improvement in school
meals as these did not feature greatly in the protests. As part of the artwork the children were
filmed doing their ‘protesting’ Peter Liversidge likes to combine documentation and performance in his
conceptual art.

Gallery 7 a lovely airy space was used to display a range
of works curated byLynette Yiadom-Boakye. This exhibition is entitled ‘Natures
– Natural and Unnatural ‘ with works generally redolent of Spring so the whole
room has a positive but peaceful air to it. She has drawn on contributions from
the Moscow based V-A-C gallery (a fairly
recent post Glasnost collection hoping to showcase home-grown more modern art )
broadly referencing nature in its content.
Warhol’s screen print of a dairy cow was based , as is often the case,
on some advertisement, and is quite reminiscent of ‘la Vache Qui Rit’, a
childhood favourite – persevere with this website and you will get an
irreverent gallop through two millennia of ‘art’ cow style.

Talking of familiar tropes – there were sunflowers about as cheerful as you can get – this time
thanks to David Hockney rather than Van Gogh but with the obligatory wilting
bloom - always there as a ‘vanitas’
symbol of the brevity of life.

We enjoyed the masked people (or were they blooms?) by
Enrico David not quite dancing like the Russian artist gyrating to Hendrix’s
‘Voodoo Child’ on the grave of his father, not so much in disrespect as
joy. An eclectic and stimulating choice.

The Whitechapel Gallery does not have a substantive
collection so we had taken ‘pot luck’ with today’s visit but were overall
impressed greatly enjoying the building and its facilities – large and largely serious bookshop, airy streetside
café and renovated basement loos. But of course the art was what we took away on this marvellous spring day.

The Project

In March 2009, we 'ladies who bus', Linda, Mary and Jo, decided to travel every London bus route from end to end. Now that we have completed this Odyssey, we are going to visit every museum in London, and let our readers know what we find and what we think.